It seems as if every institution that has been forever settled in our minds in America today is floundering and flailing around gasping for air and survival. At the same time there is a crackdown on the very freedoms that we have so often taken for granted in this country simply because they were written in our founding documents as inherited from God and forever settled as fact.
Liberties, rights and freedoms we have been accustomed to in these United States like freedom to speak, the freedom to peacefully assemble, the right to redress grievances, the right to keep or have the latest most modern firearms without fear of someone–even law enforcement–crashing down your door in the middle of the night to accost you, or take you and your property are fleeting as I write. Over many years there has been erosion of those freedoms simply because most citizens of the United States have been content to let someone else take care of the business of defending their liberties. That hasn’t turned out so well, as we have seen almost every single “secured” and “guaranteed” right intruded upon, diminished or removed by bureaucratic and governmental legislation, and the citizenry has said little to nothing to preserve those liberties.
Founding father and patriot, Samuel Adams.
Samuel Adams wrote in 1771, that those liberties we enjoy today had been purchased at the price of “toil and danger” and with “treasure and blood”. He continued that there had been much care and diligent effort put forth to pass them along to their children and posterity.
Adams remarked that it would be a “mark of infamy” on any generation that forfeited those liberties, or be “cheated out of them” without fighting for them against men set on stealing the very liberties that he and others were struggling to maintain. Mind you, he was writing this prior to the “Boston Massacre” and the Declaration of Independence, both of which were several years away.
Like any good father, Adams spoke of remembering the sacrifices our fathers have made for us, and the sacrifices we should make for our own children and future generations. He also warned those of us today–almost 250 years into the future–of becoming “satisfied” with our meager efforts to protect, defend and maintain the God given liberties that came at tremendous cost. The status quo was not acceptable to Adams and colonial patriots! He thus encouraged us to dig deeper into our souls through “circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance” to oppose any enemy from stealing our birthright as Americans.
Here are the words as originally penned by founding father and patriot Samuel Adams, as published in The Boston Gazette newspaper in 1771:
The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv’d them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas’d them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.
It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it.
Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath’d to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. — Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.
Let us remember that “if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.” It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.
This is part of an essay, written under the pseudonym “Candidus,” in The Boston Gazette (14 October 1771), later published in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865) by William Vincent Wells, and republished by Forgotten Books (2012).
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Apparently Samuel Adams thought the liberties of our country were worth fighting for because within five years the colonists were engaged in war with Great Britain, at that time, the greatest military might in the world. Perhaps they were a little closer to understanding tyranny in those days than we are today, and they had not been in the “slow boil” that the current generation have been seeped in since they were born. Back then, the tyranny was more sudden and jolting instead of slowly coming on the people incrementally. Regardless, overgrown government largess and oppression is the same whether ancient or modern when it comes to “eating out the substance” of the people or building grande societies at the cost of citizens.
The liberties Adams and others of his day fought, bled and died for came at great cost. They will always come at great cost to those who love liberty and want to keep them for themselves and their posterity.
Thomas Jefferson is purported to have said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.” That is the issue we have been facing the last many years in the United States. It is right for us to remember Samuel Adams’ words that the freedoms we enjoy did not get passed down because of the easy life, but those freedoms came to us at great cost an standing up to big oppressors.
“The people will not revolt. They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what’s happening.” — 1984 George Orwell
Michael Reed is Editor of The Standard, a pastor, businessman and conference speaker.
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